New Zea­land

Tue
10 Feb
2015

09th-10th Febru­ary 2015 – The jour­ney came to an end a week ago, but we have to have a final blog ent­ry. We can’t just lea­ve good Ort­eli­us some­whe­re near Camp­bell Island.
 
 

On 09th Febru­ary, the gent­ly rol­ling hills of Ste­wart Island came into view, on the hori­zon first, then slow­ly coming clo­ser, to ever­y­bo­dies delight. That was obvious­ly a signal for the Alba­tros­ses to say good­bye to us during that day. By the way, White-cap­ped alba­tros­ses had been among­st our faithful atten­dants for some­time. Admit­ted­ly, I had initi­al­ly belie­ved they were juve­ni­le Camp­bell alba­tros­ses. But now, they are ful­ly grown, beau­tiful repre­sen­ta­ti­ves of a spe­ci­es that I had never seen befo­re, or more likely, that I had not kno­wing­ly seen befo­re. Sple­ndid!

The end of a big jour­ney is usual­ly rather pro­fa­ne. Pass­ports need to be stam­ped (took sur­pri­sin­gly long), lug­ga­ge to be moved from ship to shore (went rather quick­ly), hands are shaken (not enough time) and then a see­mingly end­less num­ber of food items is car­ri­ed down into the ship (took far too much time). Then, rela­xed moments in a café, clai­ming to be the most sou­thern out­post of its glo­bal­ly known owner com­pa­ny, in Inver­car­gill (a one-hor­se town … sor­ry, did not want to offend anyo­ne) and in a pub in Bluff (com­pared to which, Inver­car­gill is a metro­po­lis) with my good fel­low col­le­agues. A day later, the begin­ning of a long series of 6 flights half way around the pla­net.

Mean­while, Ort­eli­us is on her way again, now alre­a­dy well on her way back into the Ross Sea. On the way south, Camp­bell Island was far more fri­end­ly than a few days befo­re, when we were the­re on our way north, as far as I have heard. Well, good luck to the ship and all on board, have a safe, gre­at jour­ney into the Ross Sea and bey­ond!

That’s it with my ant­ar­c­tic blog for the moment. Not too long befo­re I will con­ti­nue in the arc­tic. But befo­re we get that far, have a look at the tri­plog and the com­pre­hen­si­ve pho­to gal­le­ries from this Ross Sea voya­ge, the ant­ar­c­tic odys­sey, semi-cir­cum­na­vi­ga­ti­on. Advan­ced Ant­ar­c­ti­ca. And during the weeks to come, I will obvious­ly update the ant­ar­c­tic pan­ora­ma coll­ec­tion on this web­site. I star­ted the polar pan­ora­ma pho­to pil­grimage 2 years ago in the Ross Sea. Loo­king back, I think I have used the­se 2 years for good bene­fit. It will be well wort­hwhile to have a look at the Ross Sea pan­ora­mas pho­tos soon. So have a look. After the trip is befo­re the trip.

Thank you for rea­ding this far!

Rolf